The trapper was alone.
He watched them as they gradually disappeared in the gathering gloom, and then looked at his narrow prison. What a place to meet death in! What a fearful death, to die of starvation and thirst! But the trapper had no weak spot in his nature and was not likely to give way to despair.
As soon as the Indians were fairly gone, he began trying to free himself. In vain he struggled and writhed; the ligatures were too securely fastened. Pausing, at last, from sheer exhaustion, he looked about for means to accomplish his purpose. His hands were tied behind him, so that the knife in his belt was wholly useless. As he speculated, his eye chanced to rest on a single slender edge of rock, projecting from the wall. To this he speedily wriggled himself, and though from the extreme narrowness of the ledge, he was in danger of falling, he placed his hands against it and drew the bonds back and forth across it, until they snapped asunder. It required a great length of time to accomplish this, but Wild Nat had no lack of patience, and he persevered. His hands once free, it was only a moment’s work to cut the other bonds, and in a short time he stood upon the ledge free, at least to move as far as its narrow limits would permit.
But that availed him little, comparatively. In that vast wilderness there was scarcely a possibility of human aid, and he was powerless to help himself.
The narrow ledge was likely to prove his sepulcher.
CHAPTER II.
A WILD CHASE.
The sun was just visible above the burnished peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and its slanting rays rested like a halo on the tops of the trees forming a pleasant grove near the Sweetwater river.
The river, meandering along between its verdant banks, shone and sparkled like burnished silver, and rippled and chattered to itself, as if it felt the exhilarating influence of the quiet breeze and pleasant scene.
In the edge of the grove above mentioned, an emigrant-train was preparing its night-camp. The scene was a merry and exciting one. Children ran laughing and shouting in every direction; groups of women chatted in cheerful voices around fires, or strolled in couples under the trees; men, in knots of two or three, laughed, jested, and told “yarns;” here a boy was training a dog, and yonder a woman perched on a wagon-tongue, with arms akimbo, and laughing, eager face, surrounded with young girls, whose sudden bursts of shrill mirth woke the slumbering echoes of the grove and river.
A little apart from the busy scene stood two men, whom we wish more particularly to introduce to the reader.